Forgive me if I'm being dumb, but I can't seem to figure out how to stay subscribed to topics I make or post in, without having it email me of every single reply in them - it blows up my Hotmail inbox rather fast.

Just subscribe only to the topics you're interested in (check "Notify me when a reply is posted" under the editing window) and then unsubscribe once you're sick of being e-mailed with replies.

Or you could, y'know, keep a topic bookmarked and check up on it every now and again. How exactly were you planning on staying subscribed anyway?

That's what "suscribing" to a topic is supposed to do...

Most other forums have the option to just notify you in your user control panel instead. This isn't a vBulletin forum (I don't think), though, so there isn't such an option IIRC.

Right; that's what I was looking for.